NEW HAVEN >> A renowned UCLA public intellectual told an audience at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center auditorium Wednesday that while the United States may not be in a crisis right now, the nation is facing problems that are leading to its decline.

Addressing those problems as a nation is not much different than how an individual can deal with personal issues, he said.

Jared Diamond’s lecture, “Insights from individual crises for understanding national crises,” was part of Yale’s Franke Program in Science and the Humanities.

“I see parallels between individual and national crises,” Diamond said. When resolving personal problems — divorce, illness, unemployment — “building a fence” can be an effective approach. The problems can be put inside the metaphorical fence, whereas the area outside the fence represents the things one is happy with. With this technique, Diamond explained, one is less likely to feel overwhelmed with problems. And once the problems have been identified, a person, or a nation, can make “selective changes” for addressing them.

Diamond listed four factors contributing to America’s decline: a breakdown in political compromise; lack of access to voting and insufficient voter turnout; socio-economic inequities; and insufficient government investment in public goods.

Instead of spending enough on education and health, “America spends too much money on prisons,” he contended. And the prisons are “not designed for rehabilitation but for confinement.”

Among the reasons behind these problems, Diamond cited America’s perception of its uniqueness, which prevents it from taking useful practices prevalent in other countries. “We believe we can’t learn from Canada and Europe.” He said that Canada’s health care system, for instance, is one that America might emulate. Among Americans’ strengths, he cited our flexibility and our unconstrained freedom of choice.

The audience viewed the talk warmly.

“I liked the fresh way of thinking from the personal to the country,” said Kathryn Lee from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. “I particularly liked the idea of putting a fence around problems and not over-catastrophizing them,” she added. Omar Malik agreed. “The talk gives me a lot to think about,” he said.

The Franke Program aims to enhance interactions between humanists and scientists. According to the program website, it seeks to provide “new opportunities for discovering common ground and productive avenues for understanding.” Past speakers of the program include Steven Pinker and David Haskell. The next Frank Program public event is scheduled for February 24 and will feature biologist Alan Love, whose lecture is titled “Integrating Generic and Genetic Explanations of Development.”